Over break, I spent a day walking through San Francisco. Typically, when I am in San Francisco, I am with friends or family getting food or spending a sunny day in Golden Gate Park. Of course, I have explored all of San Francisco's districts, but the experience I had last Friday felt different. I was exposed to a different side of San Francisco that I had not been immersed in before.
I walked from the Embarcadero to the Civic Center and, along the way, I came face to face with one of the city’s most pressing issues: homelessness. Homelessness has been an issue for San Francisco since the 1970s and 80s and the problem has only grown more complex over time. There have been many countermeasures taken at the local and state level to help the homeless population, but the problem does not seem to improve. The homeless population in San Francisco is growing every year. Researcher Judge Glock even referred to it as the “homeless Mecca” in a 2023 Wall Street Journal letter. While I do not have an answer as to how best to approach the issue, it is worth speculating over, as the city will have to answer soon.
From conversations that I have had with people who live in the Bay Area or any city in general, I feel the need to preface that I do not have a complete, informed opinion on what the city ought to do about homelessness. This is not a political commentary on what government systems should do when it comes to homelessness and what responsibilities they have to homeless people. I am writing this out of compassion for people who have no private domicile and I believe that they deserve empathy from individuals regardless of how they ended up in their situation.
In San Francisco, there are programs in place to temporarily house homeless people and support systems to help them get on their feet. There are also food and healthcare options for homeless people to utilize. The programs and resources do not have the elasticity to support the population as is, so what will happen when the population grows even more? I have a feeling that simply expanding the programs that are providing short-term solutions to the homeless will upset their financial supporters. They will see that the problem is only getting worse and more expensive.
One contributor to the proliferation of the issue is the ever-increasing cost of living. I recently talked to an old friend who was living in San Francisco next to Golden Gate Park for two years. He was enjoying the city life and paying around $800 for rent. Within a matter of months, his landlord raised the rent by $600. He moved to a town that is an hour and a half drive away from the city for safe, affordable housing. The cost of living is driving people out of the city and is choking the class mobility of San Francisco. How could you take a homeless person who has been out of the workforce for months or years and get them a job that could independently pay for housing in the city? You can’t.
Certain steps need to be taken to help these people. It is fair to say that giving free housing to people out of the workforce is unfair to hard-working San Francisco residents who are struggling to keep up with their rising rents. However, the city does not have many options to remedy the issue. It is also a service to the working residents of the city to bring the homeless off of the street. The city has already created 7,000 permanent housing units over the past 15 years. A portion of these could be used to help the homeless and they can invest in localized shelters to isolate the homeless communities. At the same time, they should reform current laws against public encampments. Las Vegas adopted stricter laws against public encampments and opened more shelters and the city has seen improvements in recent years. In this way, San Francisco will bring the homeless population into specific areas where they can access existing charitable and governmental support programs.
The city of Berkeley did the opposite by planning to convert People’s Park, a city square that has historically been a large homeless encampment, into student dormitories and affordable housing. While the plan “accounted” for some of the homeless having access to subsidized housing, it was really just stomping on a nest and forcing the homeless campers to spread out into other parts of Berkeley and the Bay Area.
Playing “Whac-A-Mole” with the homeless crisis will not solve the issue. If the city utilizes its current resources to bring the homeless population into zones where they can be helped, it can invest in social programs to create a system that brings homeless people into temporary housing, provides entry-level jobs and helps them find living opportunities in surrounding areas, the city will have a functioning system to handle the persistent issue.
Matt Baird, proud native of Danville, California, is a sophomore majoring in English and Finance. He enjoys walking, listening to music and humming.
